Wanheda Heda
by BrokePerception
Summary: Set after 3.07 Thirteen. Lexa's spirit picks who will be the next Commander of the Twelve Clans.
_Wanheda Heda._

Clarke's eyes shot open to the darkness of her room in the Commander's Tower, to the voice of the Commander whispered right beside her ear. She forced her eyes shut as the memory of the woman dying before her eyes cascaded through her mind and shook her soul. She hated the cruelty of her own mind. Lexa was gone to a place where she would never hold her or kiss her again, touch her or make love to her.

 _Wanheda Heda._

A swish of fabric behind her raised her alertness and made Clarke's eyes open once more, and the blonde sat up and turned over, towards where she thought the source to be. For one shimmering second, the woman she loved appeared in a faded, misty appearance before she disappeared once again. Her eyes shot full of tears, and she dropped her face in her hands and raised her knees and curled up against the headboard. This was the first night of many haunting ones, where she would fall asleep exhausted from sobs and from cries, her eyes red and stinging from the saltiness of her own pain. Voices and expressions would follow her and keep her awake or tie her down in her sleep, her body cramped and locked in a nightmare that would only let up once her demons did. They never stopped really before they knew they had shattered a piece of her again, like a window in a glass building that was beginning to look more like a frame than a building recently.

 _Wanheda Heda._

"Please stop..." she whispered to the demon that haunted her as she shook with tears she couldn't stop, no idea where they could still come from, certain enough her reserve must have been depleted the night before. Finn and the mountain people had barely given her a break and stopped haunting her. The Commander had fixed her in a way that no one else ever would be able to. It was the loss of Lexa she mourned right now, and as much as the Commander had mended her then, the cuts of her loss ran impossible times as deep and as never-ending. Her heart felt like the Grand Canyon. Her soul felt shattered in tiny, tiny pieces no one would manage to count or fit together again.

"I can't. You have much to do."

She knew that it was the evilness of her mind speaking with Lexa's voice, and she tried to resist it with all she had. However, part of Clarke Griffin's soul thrummed in a way it had whenever the Commander had been near, had been alive and well, and that she could not shake off. At last, she lifted her heavy gaze up from her hands, and she saw Lexa as clearly as had she been alive, as clearly as when she had touched her skin and Lexa hers. She reached for her, but the blonde's shaky hand touched only air. Stupid. She had known that it was not possible for Lexa to be there, had seen that beautiful soul leave those eyes - the same beautiful gaze with which she had once looked so adoringly at Clarke - but still, the reality of it crushed her more than she had thought possible. She was certain that there was not a lot to shatter left now, and whatever was left, her insanity or own cruelty would take care of that.

She saw the way that, whatever this Lexa figure was or not, bite her lip in such a familiar way, as if she were guilty and regretful for Clarke's pain. She wanted to yell at it, at her, to go away, to leave on her own, for it was bad enough already. At the same time, despite the knowledge deep down that she was not the real Commander, that Lexa was gone, this representation of sorts from her, whatever it really was or whatever the source, her insanity or her cruelty, comforted her in a way that it was impossible to let go of it, for now or forever or however long she stayed.

"You don't have time to grieve, Clarke."

This was so typical for Lexa to say. Despite the last words she had uttered before her death, that there was more to life than surviving, the Commander had never felt the way she did. She felt herself enrage at the words that sounded inside her head. Time to grieve or not, how could anyone, especially this tiny, however overwhelming, piece of her own horrible imagination, expect her to move on just like that like Lexa had not been her life? She wanted to scream, that it was not that easy, but she didn't know how to put such pain in words and knew that if she began to scream at her own imaginations, she would fall in an abyss of insanity she couldn't get from.

"My spirit lives within you now, Clarke."

She felt the words burn on her lips then, that she didn't believe in that sort of things, that all of it could go to hell, that she wanted her as she was and not some spiritual bunch of words that attempted to soothe her but failed... when the pieces fell together and it just, quite suddenly, clicked. Clarke's great rage subsided and was replaced by confusion and disbelief as the idea dawned that maybe this was no figment of her imagination at all. The way Lexa's eyes shimmered clearly and openly in the rays of moonlight that cast their way in the room and illuminated it slightly but rightly told Clarke enough, and she knew what was happening.

"I can't command the Twelve Clans..."

"You were right when you told me someone had to strive for real change. It is time for you to end what I couldn't."

"I can't be the next Commander."

"You are the next Commander. I choose you, Clarke kom Skaikru."

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